Hurricane Rina Forces NASA to Abort Undersea 'Asteroid' Mission

Below:

Next story in Space

NASA recalled the astronaut crew of a mock asteroid mission on
the ocean floor today (Oct. 26) due to growing concerns about
Hurricane Rina, which is threatening to make landfall along
Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.

Since Oct. 20, a six-person crew of astronauts and scientists has
been living at the Aquarius Underwater Laboratory, which sits 60
feet (18 meters) below the Atlantic Ocean, about 3 1/2 miles off
the shore of Key Largo, Fla. But
Hurricane Rina forced the crew to resurface about a week
earlier than planned due to safety concerns from the
strengthening storm.

"[Mission controllers] were watching the weather forecast
yesterday and were 90 percent sure that they were going to have
go to ahead and end the mission," NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean
told SPACE.com. "If the forecast had changed dramatically, they
could have stayed down, but that didn't happen."

The asteroid simulation was the 15th expedition of NASA's Extreme
Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, and was the first to
test ways to anchor to an asteroid, explore its surface, and
perform science experiments on the space rock. [ Gallery:
Astronauts Explore Undersea 'Asteroid' ]

The start of the NEEMO 15 mission had already been delayed due to
what was then a tropical storm nearby. To ensure the crew's
safety, the 13-day mission was cut short today at roughly the
halfway mark.

"Crew decompressed overnight and will return to surface shortly.
Hurricane Rina just a little too close for comfort," NEEMO 15
mission controllers said via Twitter early this morning.

Yesterday, NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, commander of the
International Space Station, captured
views of the menacing Hurricane Rina from aboard the orbiting
complex. The video footage was captured at 2:39 p.m. EDT (1830
GMT) Tuesday (Oct. 25) as the space station flew 248 miles (399
kilometers) over the Caribbean Sea, east of Belize.

The NEEMO 15 "aquanaut" crew underwent a 15-hour decompression
process overnight last night and returned to the surface shortly
after 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) this morning.

"Crew sad to leave early, but feel we got a lot of objectives
accomplished," NEEMO 15 crewmember David Saint-Jacques said via
Twitter this morning. "Overnight decompression fine. See you at
surface"

NASA does not intend to resume the NEEMO 15 expedition at a later
time, Dean said, but the crewmembers were able to accomplish many
of the mission's goals while they were submerged.

"They were able to get a lot of good information," she said.
"Obviously we would have liked to have gotten more, but they have
to stay safe there."

The NEEMO 15 crew is made up of Saint-Jacques, NASA astronaut
Shannon Walker, who was commander of the expedition, Japanese
astronaut Takuya Onishi, planetary scientist Steve Squyres and
two veteran divers, James Talacek and Nate Bender of the
University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

The aquanauts were testing various concepts of how to anchor to
an asteroid, travel around on its surface, and perform science
experiments on a
mock asteroid landscape that was assembled on the ocean
floor. The crew completed six extravehicular activities outside
the Aquarius habitat and collected a wealth of scientific data in
the process, Dean said.

Yesterday, the crewmembers also participated in a series of
behavioral science projects that included simulating
communication delays with Mission Control that astronauts would
encounter on a real-life mission to an asteroid.

The results of the NEEMO 15 mission will help NASA plan for a
future trip to an asteroid. As part of NASA's exploration
goals, the agency is aiming to send humans to an asteroid by the
year 2025.

The NEEMO mission is a joint venture between NASA, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which owns the
Aquarius laboratory, and the University of North Carolina,
Wilmington, which operates the underwater facility.

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on
Twitter@denisechow.
Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration
news on Twitter@Spacedotcomand onFacebook.